The present invention relates to an audio output method and apparatus and, more particularly, to an audio output method and apparatus in a multi-window system capable of selectively outputting sound corresponding to a desired moving picture which is selected from moving pictures displayed by a multi-window system.
Conventionally, in a case where a moving picture is displayed on a bit map display of a computer, a display system of the computer generally obtains an image output from an external image reproduction apparatus such as a video tape recorder (hereinafter referred to as a "VTR") or laser disk player (hereinafter referred to as an "LD player"). The image output is then displayed on the bit map display. In a case where audio output is required, an audio signal received from the image reproduction apparatus is directly reproduced by a speaker.
In the prior art above, in the case where a plurality of moving pictures are displayed on the bit map display by the multi-window system, an image signal for each window can be obtained by simultaneously reproducing the plurality of moving pictures by the plurality of image reproduction apparatuses. Furthermore, in the case where an audio output is required when a plurality of moving pictures are being displayed by the multi-window system, a user cannot selectively listen to the sound corresponding to an image of interest due to the following problems:
1) Since a plurality of sounds are simultaneously reproduced by each image reproduction apparatus, the output is almost unintelligible; PA1 2) All sounds are not output to be silent; and PA1 3) The sound corresponding to only one moving picture is fixedly output.